Experience is the best prevention

Well-Known Member

RCBS hand primer, sitting in my easy chair with two boxen of brass; one sized and unprimed, one primed. Have my primer tray half full, chucking out about 20 rounds a minute. The wife comes up to tell me about something and my attention is taken away for just a moment.

Now I've got a ringing in my right ear and a nice burn blister on my shell-loading hand. Double fed the case and the two primers fired off.

Ow.

Focus on your task. My 5 year old doesn't bother me when I'm at my reloading table unless I have him help me out by request. My wife won't be anymore either.

Member

Well-Known Member

Indeed. My young 'un is only involved in sorting calibres of pick-up brass and sometimes I let him 'help' me resize them. I'm glad he's interested in being a helper but damn am I glad he was in a different room. Also hope this ringing goes away.

Well-Known Member

I've had this problem too, the double feed. I, however, stopped pressing when I felt the extra pressure. When performing any reloading function, it's a good idea to STOP when something feels different.

Same advice when using a progressive press. When it suddenly doesn't feel right, it's a good chance it isn't and you are asking for trouble if you just "slam ahead".

Well-Known Member

Just finished priming about 2300 rounds since I started yesterday and I've found that it was a brass problem;

I have a bunch of flavours of headstamp and some of them(Aguila) had very poorly sized primer pockets so I was having to give a little extra oomph to seat the primers in properly. The case that I double fed was actually a Winchester and I thought that it was just another Aguila that needed that harder squeeze. I'm now checking the case before AND after I work on priming.

Well-Known Member

Just finished priming about 2300 rounds since I started yesterday and I've found that it was a brass problem;

I have a bunch of flavours of headstamp and some of them(Aguila) had very poorly sized primer pockets so I was having to give a little extra oomph to seat the primers in properly. The case that I double fed was actually a Winchester and I thought that it was just another Aguila that needed that harder squeeze. I'm now checking the case before AND after I work on priming.

Click to expand...

You might do some additional checking or evaluation of your process. I've had some brass that was so bad I crushed the primers into a wad of brass in the hole, using full pressure available from my progressive press and still haven't had one "pop" on me. It takes an impact to ignite a primer. Slowly applied pressure rarely, if ever, will set a primer off. I regularly de-prime cases with upside-down primers or primers that are damaged during the process and no "pops". Slow even pressure, not "slam-bam" like some seem to favor. Just curious, were the primers Federal?

Well-Known Member

I move slow and methodical 99.9% of the time and do check every primer after seating. Out of my recent run I had 4 misaligned, one crushed, and one backwards(but I knew that was happening and stopped before it fully seated). I don't slam them in, they are pushed in with gentle and constant force. And yes, on these I'm using Federal primers. Good call, that.

Well-Known Member

Your incident is why Federal Primers will never show up in my house. I'd rather fix the problem with my firearm that makes it need super sensitive primers like Feds. You're lucky the whole tray didn't go with this one that "popped". You wouldn't be the first.

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